The editorial categories are research topics that have guided researchers during the recovery phase and continue to be the impetus behind the Documents Project’s digital archive and the Critical Documents book series. Developed by the project’s Editorial Board, each of the teams analyzed this framework and adapted it to their local contexts in developing their research objectives and work plans during the Recovery Phase. Learn more on the Editorial Framework page.
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This is the introduction to the first portfolio, published to commemorate the first anniversary of the Centro de Arte Puertorriqueño [Puerto Rican Art Center] (CAP) that was established in 1950 in San Juan. The essay describes the goals and prograpms of CAP: the exhibition hall, the art school, and the print shop. It states that the CAP intends to create “an intimate relationship between artists and the Puerto Rican people.” The strategy for accomplishing the main objectives includes providing unconditional help for young artists, presenting talks on art, and using the press and the radio to communicate with the people about Puerto Rican art and the establishment of CAPs on other parts of the Island.
In 1950 Rafael Tufiño, José Antonio Torres Martinó, Félix Rodríguez Báez, and Lorenzo Homar founded the Centro de Arte Puertorriqueño [Puerto Rican Art Center] (CAP). The CAP provided a variety of services, including a communal print shop, an art school, and a place to exhibit work and hold meetings. The CAP drew its political ideology from Pedro Albizu Campos (the Puerto Rican nationalist leader), and the Mexican Taller de Gráfica Popular [People’s Print Shop] (TGP), where Tufiño and other artists had studied. The goal of CAP to work together to create a Puerto Rican art that would resonate with the people was clearly expressed in its first portfolio La estampa puertorriqueña [The Puerto Rican Print], published in 1951. CAP artists believed that the print was the ideal medium in which to reach a vast audience and to rekindle a universal sense of Puerto Rican art.